Name: Fabian's review of Delta-v by Daniel Suarez
Item: Delta-v
Rating: 4
Author: Fabian

Daniel Suarez

Delta-v tells the story of a group of commercial space pioneers on a multi-year expedition to lift humanity from an Earth-bound species to a space-faring one. Much like the private explorers of earlier centuries whose voyages were financed by investors, these new adventurers gravitate toward risk - ex-soldiers, former astronauts, cavers, salvage divers, base jumpers, and mountain climbers. As the second Age of Exploration begins, they intend to alter the trajectory of human civilization - or die trying.

Delta-v

Fabian

Gavin

Hopeful and precise. Surprisingly moving, in the second half anyway. The prose is flat, economical, and repetitive (for instance, every time the characters do pre-emptive oxygen saturation before a spacewalk, Suarez tells you so), but if you like space or engineering detail you'll be fine. It's billed as (very) hard scifi, but there was actually less physics and more economics in it than I was expecting (and still too much kinematic exposition for most readers, I guess). It's "hard" in the sense that every technology in this already exists in some form, if only prototype or protoprototype, that every celestial body mentioned exists in that location, that the energy budget of the crew is taken seriously - "gravity wells are for suckers" - that their (even safety-critical) software has many terrible bugs. (view spoiler)[(Though I thought this was implausible:
The flight suits were meant only for short, emergency EVAs, but without access to the ship's network, the clam suits' high-tech helmets were inert.
)
Why not completely local processing? Why not use the lo-tech visor instead? (hide spoiler)]

The most moving part was (view spoiler)[Nicole's euthanasia scene, though the anguish of Goff's stupid robots and extortion is also quite big (hide spoiler)]. Some of the most important things in the world rely on sacrifice, and really we should be more moved by the death of an asteroid miner than that of a soldier in a typical war. One is driving the species forward, one is crab-wrestling in a bucket. 

Why is space so moving? Well there's the stated reason, via Hawking:

  
With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics, and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious.


But does this argument from reduction of existential risk go through? Probably not - most x-risk is due to us, not volcanoes or asteroids or gamma bursts, and we should expect this kind of risk to reduce only modestly in a multiplanetary setting, since the act of colonisation carries the risk source, us, with it; and there are much cheaper and more developed ways of preventing extinction, like arms control and AI research. And we're (even) more likely to have large conflicts when the cultural distances, between planetary civilisations, are so much larger. 

So what? Is it our genes, new-pastures wanderlust? The sheer scale? 

There's a lot of ostentation in the book, unnecessary mentions of Zegna suits and fancy watches and whatnot (perhaps intended to make us suspicious of the investors and lawyers who wear them - but we already have them admitting that they are motivated by egomania and envy). The billionaire at the heart of the plot is a suitable mix of inspirational, reckless, authoritarian, noble, ignoble. 

Props to Suarez for using SpaceEngine and Kerbal to model the precise trajectory of his crew, though many extra points would have accrued had he open-sourced the run, for the purposes of scientific hermeneutics. Also for his bibliography and dissing Mars colonisation. 

Suarez' claim that a single asteroid trip could make a trillion dollars is contradicted in the Weinersmith's pop book, where they emphasise the legal headaches, and that the profits are conditional on a huge increase in human space activity (otherwise not much demand for your LEO wares). This is all I know, and it's not very strong evidence either way.


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How does it do as Serious science fiction?

Social development: None. One thing which doesn't happen much IRL is the (view spoiler)[financial and literal suicide mission by a billionaire for the purposes of driving humanity forward (hide spoiler)], but this is just ordinary audacity scaled up. I like the extrapolation of Luxembourg's space industry, the ultimate colonial underwriting. The secret construction of a spaceship in HEO is implausible at the moment but might not be in a few decades.

Software development: Yes! The mission is almost lost several times due to software problems, and Ade is the most critical crewmember because of his top monkeypatching and hacking skills (hacking in both senses).

Actual science: Yes. The gravity ship is actually basic physics, just incredibly hard and expensive engineering (Joyce drops something like $45bn on the project, which sounds about right). The economic argument about moving and constructing everything outside of gravity wells seems incontrovertible to me.

Cindy Lieberman

3.4 Having given Change Agent 5 stars and all of his other previous novels 4 stars, I am pretty disappointed in this book. Sure I learned a lot about asteroid mining, but the characters were none too deep. Lazy or corrupt government officials? Check. Eccentric billionaires? Check. Daring heroes? Check. If you are a fan of space operas, this might be your thing.

The bestselling author of Daemon returns with a near-future technological thriller, in which a charismatic billionaire recruits a team of adventurers to launch the first deep space mining operation--a mission that could alter the trajectory of human civilization. When itinerant cave diver James Tighe receives an invitation to billionaire Nathan Joyce's private island, he thinks it must be a mistake. But Tighe's unique skill set makes him a prime candidate for Joyce's high-risk venture to mine a near-earth asteroid--with the goal of kick-starting an entire off-world economy. The potential rewards and personal risks are staggering, but the competition is fierce and the stakes couldn't be higher. Isolated and pushed beyond their breaking points, Tighe and his fellow twenty-first century adventurers--ex-soldiers, former astronauts, BASE jumpers, and mountain climbers--must rely on each other to survive not only the dangers of a multi-year expedition but the harsh realities of business in space. They're determined to transform humanity from an Earth-bound species to a space-faring one--or die trying.

Bradford Fults

Suarez once again (see Daemon & Freedom™) gives us a very real-feeling peek at the very near future and some of the most interesting technological opportunities and challenges that face our species.

Anyone who appreciates hyper-practical orbital mechanics and hard realities of space, combined with an unwavering pioneering spirit and ruthless focus on executing a mission will deeply appreciate this quick trip into humanity's near future. Big problems are met with uncommon audacity that could just inspire.

Erlank Pienaar

Excellent. Pre-cursor to 'The Expanse Series'. Kinda. How we will go to space, via asteroid mining, and not by hanging out on Mars. Sorry, that comes later. This book is envisioning our quest into space by solving the resource exploitation on earth (asteroid mining) and enabling technology that allows us to transition to living in space, not rocketing around the solar system. Again, that comes later. 

Bryan Alexander

Delta-V is a straight-up space story. It takes place in the very near future and follows the first human attempt to mine asteroids.

The plot focuses on a group of people who organize, train, or compete with the mission. Our point of view character is a cave diver, and gives us a decent window into the science and engineering. Another character is an Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos Heinleinian type, a space-obsessed plutocrat who pulls increasingly dodgy string to set things up.

As a straight-up space story Delta-V satisfies. The ideas are quite plausible or in use now ((view spoiler)[spinning for gravity, 3d printing, teleoperated machines (hide spoiler)]); there isn't any magic or speculative science (no wormholes, human-transcendent AI, quantum videoconferencing) (fans of The Expanse series will feel right at home). The plot has enough energy, stress, and surprise to keep you going for hundreds of pages.

However, it's not more than that. Characters are very lightly sketched. Tighe gets the most depth, but he's basically Mr. Competent and that's about it. He has some background that he reacts to - a bad cave expedition, some father issues, a separated family - but that's very thin on the novel's ground. The Bezos character is fascinating yet cryptic, barely drawn. Delta-V is really just about the idea of space mining. Suarez is a good enough thriller writer to make it work.

I'm fascinating by how this book fits into the current wave of science fiction looking at space travel. Delta-V reminds me of The Martian, especially the movie version, in its combination of very hard work and passionate call for human spaceflight. The Odyssey plot (start from home (Earth), go far away, struggle, return home) also brings to mind Gravity (2013) or Kim Stanley Robinson's frustrating Aurora (my review). Like those stories, Delta-V is very meticulous in imagining how such a space odyssey would occur. Unlike them, it doesn't collapse upon the Earth's surface in profound and reactionary relief, ending the possibility of humanity's stellar possibilities. 

We can see an echo of this in the recent film First Man, which offers an exciting vision of NASA's triumphant progress, while undercutting it by depicting Armstrong not as a hero but as a failed human being, utterly incapable of interpersonal interaction. The movie's prominent use of Gil-Scott Heron's "White on the Moon" is both apt for its approach and depressing to me. Overall, contemporary science fiction seems to have a divided moment about human spaceflight. That's worth noting. And I know on which side of the division I stand.

3 stars as a novel. 4 for the space optimism.

Brandon Lee

Pierre

Malcolm Fell

Leon Beckert

Stefan Ladstätter-Thaa

Martin Weitzel

Sean Leach

James Tighe, kurz JT, ist ein Glücksritter und der beste Höhlentaucher der Welt. Eines Tages lädt ihn der Milliardär Nathan Joyce auf seine private Insel, um ihm ein Angebot zu machen. Es geht um ein so visionäres wie hochgeheimes Projekt: Von einer Station im All soll ein riesiger Asteroid wirtschaftlich erschlossen werden. Denn die Menschheit des Jahres 2030 ist für ihr Überleben auf Rohstoffe angewiesen. Zusammen mit Ex-Soldaten, Astronauten, Wissenschaftlern soll JT zu einem Team verwachsen, das extreme Situationen bestehen muss. Ungeheure Reichtümer locken. Es droht auch jederzeit der Tod. Und sehr spät erst begreifen die Mitglieder von Delta-V, dass Nathan Joyce ein doppeltes Spiel treibt ...

Fabian &
Delta-v by Daniel Suarez

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